Just as his first band, Spacemen 3, took drugs to make music
to take drugs to, Sonic Boom (aka Pete Kember) is a record
collector who ended up making collectible records. Thankfully, Kember
has great taste in music—if not so much in drugs.
In the early ’80s, along with Jason Pierce, Kember started Spacemen
3 and led them to cult status among heads seeking psych and drone
ambrosia. Both guitarist/vocalists shared a vision (and a
birthday/birthplace: November 19, 1965; Rugby, England) that
encompassed rock primitivism (the Stooges, Velvets/Lou Reed),
psychedelia (the 13th Floor Elevators), electronic oscillations and
throbbing pulsations (Silver Apples, Delia Derbyshire, Suicide), stoned
blues (JJ Cale), and minimalist drones. Spacemen 3 synthesized their
excellent influences into songs that welded outward-bound sonics to
honeyed melodies—proving that in deep space, you can still carry
a tune, albeit a deadpan, stripped-down one. They made the sound of
confusion seem like one of the best trips you could take and “Walking
with Jesus” a distinct (if fuzzed-to-hell) possibility.
After three good-to-awesome full-lengths, Pierce and Kember split
during the making of Spacemen 3’s Recurring (1991), with the
former forming Spiritualized and the latter going solo as Sonic
Boom and then Spectrum, and, concurrently, the less
song-oriented Experimental Audio Research (EAR).
Spectrum has been Kember’s most high-profile project in America;
1997’s Forever Alien even received major-label support. In his
Spectrum guise, Kember lets his enthusiasm for analog synths and arcane
gadgets (Speak & Spell, etc.) run riot; Spectrum LP and EP covers
fetishize said gear, along with Kember’s love of op art, whose
orb-dazzling patterns mirror his music’s effect on receptive minds.
Like Silver Apples and Suicide, Spectrum keep one foot in the terra
firma of structured song and another dangling out of the starship (Sun
Ra reference intended). Their tracks range from the gentlest
dream-weaver ballads (“Touch the Stars”) to sci-fi-flick ambience
(“Liquid Intentions”) to euphoric electro pop (“How You Satisfy Me”) to
chilling paeans to LSD chemists (“Owsley”) to unnerving grotesqueries
(“The New Atlantis”).
Spectrum’s new War Sucks EP rocks harder than their past
output. “Razzle-Dazzle Mind” runs the Stooges’ “I Wanna Be Your Dog”
through a fibrillating-synth force field and Ron Asheton–homaging
guitar glower. On the stoic cover of the Red Krayola’s bilious
anti–Vietnam War anthem “War Sucks,” Spectrum augment the
original’s relentless, ominous riff with Iannis Xenakis–like
tone-scarifying. Unsurprisingly, this tune is as relevant now as it was
when Mayo Thompson and company wrote it in the late ’60s.
Spectrum—also featuring guitarist Jason Holt, bassist Nolan Watkinson, and drummer Roger Brogan—promise a
retro-futurist whirl through their (and Spacemen 3’s) catalog of
analog-synth symphonies and stardusted rock revisionism. 
This article has been updated since it was originally published
